I believe the great CEOs understand both business success and personal success. My higher purpose is to disseminate CEO wisdom to help elevate business, the economy and society. My platforms are: host of the nationally syndicated Am/Fm radio show The CEO Show with Robert Reiss, and host of the CEO TV Show. We also produce The CEO Forum magazine, which is received exclusively by the top 10,000 CEOs in America. I recently co-authored, “The Transformative CEO” which was published by McGraw-Hill in 2012. One of my passions is sharing insights by giving keynote speeches on the topic, “What we can learn from America’s top CEOs”.

The Future of Customer Centricity: Insights from Top CEOs

The heart of the word customer is “custom.” Great companies understand this. They know building a value proposition around what customers really want – and will want in the future – is the foundation for a leading business. To gain insights about how top CEOs connect with customers, on December 7, 2011, I facilitated a 1-hour discussion with leaders from the most customer centric companies in industries like: health care, financial services, technology and food & beverage. Some insights include that in the restaurant business tasting menus are the future, the only sustainable competitive strategy for banking now and in the future is customer experience, and that healthcare will shift to the home.

The participants were: George Halvorson, CEO & Chairman of Kaiser Permanente, leading healthcare provider with 180,000 employees $45 billion revenue, 36 hospitals and more than 8.9 million members; Bharat Masrani, CEO & President of TD Bank a perennial award winner in service; Chris Artinian, CEO of Morton’s Restaurants with 77 global steakhouses and a service model with perhaps unparalleled adulation from customers; and Raj Mirchandani, IBM’s Global Leader in digital and contact center service. Here are their verbatim insights.

How do you create customized experiences?

Chris Artinian, Morton’s: “It goes beyond what’s on the menu. You see someone pulling out a laptop, you know what? Let’s anticipate their needs and move them into a room where they can plug it into a bigger screen which we have available to them. And it’s teaching the folks to recognize those types of opportunities to make the guest feel like you’re looking out for them.”

What do you do personally to engage your organization?

George Halvorson, Kaiser Permanente: “I send an email every Friday to every single one of our employees. And they’re typically around 1000 words or maybe a little less. Every single letter celebrates something that we’ve done. One of our successes has been to literally cut the number of deaths from sepsis in half. I wrote about that success, but I didn’t write about it from the perspective of a statistic, I wrote about it from the perspective of how horrible it is for patients to have sepsis and what an ugly thing it is for a patient and their family to go through that experience. And then I told our staff how important it is that we’ve done the things that we’ve done to cut sepsis deaths in half. That makes it a personal thing for each staff member.”

Talk about your customer model.

Bharat Masrani, TD Bank: “We came to the realization many, many years ago that the only way to sustain a competitive advantage is through legendary customer experiences. There is no other way in my business … you cannot come up with to m any innovative products to sustain you over many years because most likely it will be replicated within a nanosecond. You cannot compete on price. If that’s your business model then it is not going to be sustainable and somebody’s going to match you. In the United States, we speak to more than 800 customers every night to deliver on our promise of America’s Most Convenient Bank. Everyone at TD is empowered to think like the customer.”

Chris Artinian, Morton’s: “It’s about hiring for the passion and making sure that they’re fully engaged in understanding how to take care of guests’ needs by understanding how to care of each other’s needs within the four walls of our building and our company first.”

How is technology changing your business?

Bharat Masrani, TD Bank: “We are going through a major technological change. We are going through a major demographic change. And while banking -will not change in any dramatic fashion it will change as to how we deliver those products, how we sell those products, how we provide advice, what channels we use and how are reacting to those changes.”

Chris Artinian, Morton’s: “We have it in all of our restaurants but we also use satellite technology to make it easier for folks to have meetings on a broad scale without traveling people to 30 or 40 different cities to one place. From one location you can still broadcast the meeting, still have dinner at Morton’s in a private dining room and not have to travel those folks and take the time away from the office, and without the expense of a hotel.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.